The final day of a legislative session has a distinct rhythm. The hallways get crowded. Phones are always buzzing. Legislators move more quickly than the public can keep up with, exchanging favors and whispered warnings. Additionally, a single call made at the perfect time can occasionally subtly undo months of meticulous work.
That’s essentially what transpired in Jefferson City on Friday, when Missouri’s attempt to restructure oversight of its MOScholars private school voucher program failed without even a formal vote. Both parties supported the plan. The Senate had approved it the day before. It was moving forward. The bill was dead by the afternoon after St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski contacted state Representative Jim Murphy.
There had been criticism of Missouri’s private school voucher program for some time, and with good reason. The treasurer’s office, which is currently in charge of MOScholars, unintentionally disclosed program participants’ names, parent email addresses, scholarship amounts, and the schools they attended last month. That is the kind of error that could have immediate repercussions in any other situation. Additionally, the State Auditor’s Office discovered last summer that Treasurer Vivek Malek’s office had completely neglected mandatory yearly audits and lacked basic protocols for keeping an eye on the organizations that award the scholarships.
It wasn’t a radical reform proposal. It would have transferred control of MOScholars from the Treasurer’s Office to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, a change that lawmakers from both parties had been discussing in private for a while. It was supported by Affton Democrat Doug Beck, the Senate Minority Leader. Rusty Black, a Republican from Chillicothe who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, also did. In a divided legislature, that kind of crossover alignment is difficult to achieve.
And yet. Before the hearing on Friday morning, Murphy, a Republican from St. Louis County who chairs the House Fiscal Review Committee, had received thirteen calls regarding the bill. The Archbishop was one of them. Rozanski’s call, Murphy later told reporters, “only solidified” his opinion that the bill was “not fiscally sound in any way.” He laughed and made the sign of the cross after asking the Archbishop for a special dispensation if he killed the bill—a detail that is truly difficult to fabricate. A dispensation, according to Catholic tradition, allows one to disobey a rule. Murphy was making a joke. Most likely.
The institutional weight behind the call is more difficult to dismiss. MOScholars scholarships are administered by seven organizations, including the Archdiocese of St. Louis. It has a direct financial interest in the administration and design of the program. As he observed everything, Beck was direct: “I’m not sure why the archbishop is calling education policy for the state of Missouri.” He claimed that the program’s lobbying turned his stomach.
Murphy might have killed the bill anyhow. He has insisted that his objections were procedural, financial, and substantive. However, it is challenging to isolate the timing from the context. Malek himself appeared at the hearing on Friday morning with two staff members, seemingly anticipating the bill’s passage. He had even been informed by a House employee that it would be discussed at the upcoming recess. Murphy merely declined to call the committee back together. His succinct and definitive response to a Democratic colleague’s question about why was, “Those are not moving.”
The window was completely closed by the hard deadline of 6 p.m. for all legislation to pass. On a Friday afternoon, in between an archbishop’s phone and a fiscal review committee, months of negotiations were completed in a matter of hours.
Observing something like this gives one the impression that the institutional and public interests are functioning on completely different frequencies. There are serious issues with accountability in Missouri’s private school voucher program. That much is undeniable. It seems that issues that are never included in committee agendas determine whether or not those issues are addressed, as well as who gets to make that decision.
